То Dante

         





          TO  DANTE

                No greater grief than to remember days
                Of joy when misery is present; that
                Your learned instructor knows.               
                Dante's "Inferno," Canto V, 121

Your eagle eyes concealed from rays of light,
Your palm aglow with fasts and candle's beams.
In hollow sockets, tears you’ve shed in plight,
Your swarm of shadows locked within your dreams.

In circles close, where flesh remains so still,
Yet spirit's burden echoes from afar,
Like grinding teeth beneath our feet, we feel,
We stand already, past the falling  star.

Oh, Dante! How you sang of love in  silent night,
In  soft andante, filling songs with rhymes,
you led us to the source of our souls' delight.

Your tercets sounded as if  in their prime,
their notes entwined like rays of candlelight
While Virgil's vigil kept you on your feet to fight. . .
 

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